You good? Okay, so can you tell us
your name and what you're researching? Sure my name
is Alexis Johnston, and my current research deals a
lot with undergraduate students here at Virginia Tech and the
relationship between journal writing and a math course which is
something that's typically really new and different for a lot
of undergraduate math students. So looking at the relationship
between journal writing and their motivation. Um and what's
exciting about my research is that throughout my time in
the program here I've gotten to try lots of different
types of research. Um quantitative research, doing surveys
and survey analysis which was really neat. Um And
then also like teaching experiments, we did that and
we focused on middle school students which was really neat.
And, now I'm focusing on very qualitative research um analyzing
interviews with undergraduate students. So throughout my experience here
at Virginia Tech my research has been incredibly varied and
my research now focuses, like I said more on
the qualitative um side of things interviewing students and analyzing
the responses that they say related to their motivation.
Is there something that made you want to focus on
undergrads in particular? Uh Yeah, I initially started
this program because I was really interested in math education
and I loved teaching math courses as a masters grad
student in the math department I got to teach
some undergraduate math courses and thought that was really interesting.
I really enjoyed that and thought that it was
very complex more than people think all this sort of
intricacies of the students who different majors and what that
adds to the group. Um So I got really
interested in in analyzing how undergraduate students learn math. Awesome,
describe the relationship, must see this. So you
got your masters in the math department and you're now
in the school of education? Yes. How has learning those
two different settings helped you? Okay. Um Well,
I really enjoyed my time in the math department
as a master student because I got to build a
really strong foundation of mathematical knowledge um and that's something
that was really built up through my time in the
math department and then jumping over to the School of
Education, I got to learn a lot about learning
theories and different pedagogies that help students build up
that knowledge of mathematics. And so for me it's
been nice to sort of have a foot in each
department throughout my time here because I've been able to
have strong mathematical knowledge and understand how students learn math.
Do you think that's the strength that everyone gets to enjoy
when they come through the programs at Virginia Tech?
I do, um I know I'm not unique in
getting that experience because students that are in the School
of Ed get to take math courses as well to
build up their mathematical knowledge and students that are in
the math department take a lot of education courses.
And so there's a really nice bridge between the two
departments and a lot of collaboration between the two departments
. So what do you think? Who sets apart
the math ed program at Virginia Tech from other schools.
Mhm. Is it okay that I took a
long time to pass? You can edit that out.
Okay. Um I would say that it really
is that collaboration between the math department and the school
of education. Um It's really unique that our faculty
members are across those two departments. We have some
faculty members of the college education, some that are
in the math department and it's great that we can
go to each for sort of different areas of expertise.
Um and we can work with faculty members in
both both departments. Um And as a collection of
graduate students, there's some of us in the math
department, some of us in the school bed and
it's neat to sort of talk and work on projects
together because you get different perspectives. And that I
think is really unique that we collaborate so well between
the two departments. Do you regularly interact with the
math departments? Yeah PhD students who have the math
concentration. Yes. Um Every semester we take a
seminar actually take two seminars. One seminar that we
take is focused on some area of math education research.
So we took a seminar on a construct called
quantitative literacy and we learned what it means for students
to have quantitative literacy. We took one on learning
probability and statistics together we took one on students fractional
understanding this semester. We're all taking one on research
and undergraduate mathematics education. So every semester there's a
seminar offered by a um in the fall I believe
it's a professor from the School of Education and in
the spring I believe it's a professor from the department
of Math that seems to be the pattern. Um
and we all take that class together, so we
have class together every semester. In addition to that,
we have professional seminars, which is a really
neat aspect of our program. And in our professional
seminars we meet once every other week. Um and
we all meet together, so it's all the faculty
and all of the graduate students um in either of
the school bed or the department of Math. And
we all kind of share our own research in that
time and it's a really valuable space for graduate students
to share what research they're doing with their peers and
get feedback from that and from their faculty members as
well and get feedback from that. So we interact
all the time. Um In addition to that,
we've had every other week lunches where we kind of
get together and hang out um trips to Panera Starbucks
just to just to get to know each other a
little bit more. Um So across the departments we
, I don't even think we think of each other
as being in different departments. We just think of
each other as all in the method program and it
really doesn't matter where were housed. So Jeff and
I attended a seminar last week. Yes, that's
sort of a typical seminar, if there is such
a thing. Yes, that was a very typical
seminar um where Michael, one of our graduate students
was working on his prelims, which is one of
the milestones towards getting your PhD and he was presenting
part of his prelims to us to get feedback on
what he was researching and what he had found out
about that topic. So that would be a typical
seminar where one graduate student shares with everyone else what
they have been working on. It might look like
that format where he was presenting something. Another format
is sometimes, well like email out of paper to
the whole group and say, hey, everybody read
this paper, I've been working on it, I'm
a gonna present it to my committee. So everybody
read it and then we just get there and we
just sort of talk well sitting around circle and just
talk about the paper and people will throw out ideas
and we'll sort of discuss what was presented in the
paper. So it can be something formal you guys
saw where Michael's presenting or it can be really informal
, just sort of chatting about someone's work and getting
feedback. Have you been able to form good relationships
with faculty while you've been here. Yes, very
much so, um the faculty are all really supportive
and really encouraging. I have and that is both
the faculty in the math department and in the,
in the school that I've had a great have great
relationships with all of them. I feel like I
have the best committee of a PhD student could ever
ask for. Um like I said, really supportive
, really encouraging, but also really challenging. Like
they challenged me to do my best to push,
push the limits. So it's a really good combination
between supporting the grad students and challenging them to,
you know, learn as much as possible If you
can pick one. What's your favorite thing about the
method program? Mm You can sing 11. Okay
. Uh huh. Favorite thing. I have like
five things in my mind right now. One thing
I really like is the fact that we do all
the graduate students know each other really well and we
know the faculty really well. Um it's a small
program, but it's a growing program and you get
to know each other and you get a lot of
like a set support and encouragement and feedback from everyone
in the department. And that's really valuable as a
graduate student to have a whole department that you're working
with and that you can um you know, it's
sort of like your support system to go through graduate
school. That's one thing that I really love,
another thing that I really love is that we get
to know each other in an academic sense and what
we're learning together the classes were taking together but we
also know each other in a social sense as well
. Like I would consider my uh colleague student my
friends as well. So I love that about our
department. Um I also really love our seminar weekly
seminars like the one that you guys visited that's a
really neat time for us to get feedback to talk
about issues. You know prepare for conferences. I
think that's one of the most valuable things that we
have in our department. Have you enjoyed living in
Blacksburg? I love Blacksburg. It's a really small
quaint town and my first year here I visited a
different restaurant every weekend to try and visit all of
the different unique local restaurants and I had a blast
doing that. So there's all kinds of restaurants.
Um Blacksburg is a great town, I love everything
about it. Do you have a favorite thing about
Virginia? Do you ever think about Virginia Tech?
Um I have a lot of favorite things about Virginia
tech. Um The campus is beautiful. You can't
deny that. Um And I'm gonna go with the
conventional route and save for jay Tech. Athletics is
really awesome are really awesome. I love football but
I'm a huge basketball fan so we're in the
ACC We get to see lots
of great basketball action you know we've got a great
team so you know it's fun to uh like I
said you get the, the academic side of things,
which is great. But then you get a
lot of social and fun stuff to like sports.
Is there anything else you want to add about my
head program about your time here about Blacksburg Virginia Tech?
Let's see. Think so. Okay. Yeah,
He has a question. So. Fine.
Thank you very much. You're very like girl. 200 00:11:52.830 --> A:middle L:90% Thanks.